Estimates say that we have served over 300,000 people in the last quarter century and against all odds have worked to sustain the possibility of re-villaging in the Western culture of these days (which does not necessarily align at all with the values of cooperation/healing/responsibility for our footprint on the planet/culture repair/future generations).
Within all of the challenges and the great joys — OUR work continues to fly forward in learning to be more comfortable being uncomfortable in these certainly uncertain times.
With this, OUR collection of many peoples/partners from the past 25 years have come together to understand how to move into what is next. How might we work towards returning the lands of OUR Ecovillage in some way to the original ownership of the First Peoples of this territory?
How might the lands become more fertile in place and the love of the people? How might this Legacy Project support the future generations? These are big questions and we call this work “Awakening the Dragon”. OUR design is to change the narrative….to reSTORY ourselves and to find the best of traditional knowledge from all the Peoples of the world and marry this with the greatest possibilities of knowing a new future.
OUR Anniversary has brought us to work with Innoweave and a larger Charitable Foundation to look into the future of what the Village Vision will be for “Awakening the Dragon: reSTORYing Our Collective Future”. This is an inquiry process into how the climate and nature emergency story bears a resemblance to the narrative of the Dragons of old stories in European lore. here is a familiarity to the feelings of fear in the awaiting of the ‘big bad something…’ which is ever awaited to come and burn our villages.
OUR curiosity is how to work with shifting this narrative to one of deep listening — and maybe just maybe hearing. the dragon a different way; as a teacher and an ally. The question asked is if the dragon might lead us from a place of overwhelm, and sometimes fear, and guide the way towards futurists and solutionairies! And — 1000’s of children/youth and the wider community have wrestled with the larger needs/questions for our people/planet/processes of the future while working on the sculpting of a giant (perhaps 25 ac) earthen sculpted beautiful Dragon.
This journey will continue to be part of OUR “Art and Culture of Community Playshops” on weekends throughout the summer of 2024 and with as many next generation of climate and nature emergency reSTORYing allies as might wish to circle up with this creative Vision!
As this process unfolds, we have developed a new ‘Theory of Change’ and the dragon’s path forward as it teaches us to pivot, shift OUR perspective, and hasten OUR efforts to share the precedent work that has been the journey of OUR Ecovillages design/build with zoning, ecological building, integrated food systems, water/waste/innovation design, permaculture at its finest….and co-creating a culture of re-Villaging! A journey of 2 years of Visioning has brought forward this new Vision and a guiding ‘Impact Statement’.
Impact Statement:
The unique immersive environment of O.U.R. Ecovillage creates local to global change through innovative demonstration projects and experiential learning in the domains of: Climate & Nature Emergency Education, Peacemaking/Restorative Justice & Cooperative Culture Engagement and Applied Research Partnerships.
Over the next 3-5 years we intend to increase OUR Bio-Regional School’s Regenerative Living Programs to further brave personal, collective, and systemic Healing.
The development of skills and knowledge gained through participation in programs and projects will enable stakeholders/stewards, and visitors/learners, to experience a deep transformational shift in worldviews.
This reSTORYing of perspective…creates a metamorphosis in the behaviours affecting how we as humans are living, and dying, into the (certainly uncertain) future.